


Our End is in Our Beginning, Our Beginning in Our End (The Haze of Time Recalled: the Hollow Man Mix)

by arysteia



Category: Smallville
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-24
Updated: 2011-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-18 14:31:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arysteia/pseuds/arysteia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I feel vaguely like I ought to apologise; four Eliot riffs in a single fic is well-nigh unforgiveable.  But there you are.  And he's kind of the patron of remix in particular, and transformative works in general, anyway: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different."</p><p>Lex's parting shot to Clark is from Petronius' <i>Satyricon</i>, and serves as the epigraph to <i>The Wasteland</i>:</p><p>"I have seen with my own eyes the Sibyl hanging in her jar, and when the boys asked her: What do you want;  she answered: I want to die."</p></blockquote>





	Our End is in Our Beginning, Our Beginning in Our End (The Haze of Time Recalled: the Hollow Man Mix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [danceswithgary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswithgary/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Haze of Time Recalled](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23845) by [danceswithgary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswithgary/pseuds/danceswithgary). 



It turns out Eliot was right. The end of the world is ludicrously anti-climactic. All his dreams – _nightmares, surely_ – of thunder, lightning, blood raining from the darkened sky, invasions, cataclysmic battles, proved just that – the fevered imaginings of an over-emotional child. The child he never was, and yet somehow always remained. The innocent, true children of the northern hemisphere, safe in their beds, sleep untroubled by conscience or paranoia, will never know what happened. Those of the south will see slightly more; going about their daily business, at school, at play, they'll see a lowering red sky, maybe one brief flash, but then for them, too, it will all be over.

No such mercy for him. His ability to heal has reached godlike proportions – the hand he lost to cancer has fully regenerated inside the black glove he still wears for appearances' sake; broken bones knit in hours, bullet holes and stab wounds in mere minutes. If he strips there'll be no trace of the six shots Doctor Kasanji pumped into him upstairs. He barely felt the impact, only knows it was six because there are six brilliant crimson flowers spreading across his otherwise immaculate white suit. He has little doubt that eternity will see him and the alien still taunting each other in whatever wasteland remains after the core breaches. He flashes briefly on an old _Star Trek_ episode, two men in cheap leotards and black and white face paint, chasing each other across the surface of the planet they'd murdered, and sighs. Stuff of legends indeed. From the sublime to the ridiculous.

The entire complex sealed automatically when the impending failure was signalled. There's little panic, Kasanji notwithstanding – those who understand what's happening understand equally that there's nothing to be done, and those who don't go about their business unperturbed, the arrival of Metropolis' self-appointed guardian angel and conscience a reassurance and inconvenience all at once. He types in the code only four people – three now – have for the lowest level of the facility, and braces himself for the feeling of vertigo as it overrides the lockdown and the elevator plummets.

He could pretend he's doing it to be noble; his younger self would have. Might even have meant it – he'd have done anything back then for a blinding white smile, a twinkle in green eyes. It isn't true now though. This is his victory, the only one left to him. All these years, all his provocation, he's never been able to make Superman do it. And the alien, no, _Clark_ , beautiful, brilliant, _righteous_ Clark, has constantly flaunted that choice. In spandex, or in an off the rack suit, the look in his eye is always the same. _See how much better I am than you_. Now, now he gets to take that choice away.

He'd mused for hours even before, _dwelled_ , Clark had insisted, on the whys and wherefores of it. Unable to _move on_ the way Clark insisted he should.

 _I lived when I should have died_.

A bale of wire, the shrill of his cell, the screech of tyres and one shocked glimpse of a young boy's face, before it all went black. He remembers it like yesterday, has thought on it near constantly over the years, the moment where everything changed.

 _Come on! Don't die on me!_

The deep-tissue bruises on his torso that took days to heal, long after the comparatively shallow, and easily distinguishable, one from the steering wheel had faded… The hairline cracks in his ribs that barely showed up on an x-ray but made every breath a torment all the same… It would have been so easy – _will be so easy_ – to apply a little too much pressure, to hold back vital air, the inherent frailty of the human body, even his enhanced, still human, body, providing the accidental means to an end. Clark will never know, at least not the boy that he was – _will be_ – then, and he is just sentimental enough, in these final moments, to be glad of that. _You're ruled by your emotions, son_. But he knows. And that's enough.

He steps over the body of a brilliant young woman who left CERN and came to work for him because he told her they'd make history, change the world, together, and into the containment chamber. He can hear a rhythmic pounding in the distance, Kryptonian fists against lead painted, kryptonite studded bulkheads. They'll give, everything does, but not soon enough. He types in the failsafe codes, and sets the countdown.

It's the opposite of a zero sum. Everyone wins. The children in their beds get to live. To grow up. To laugh and love and marry, and do great things, and betray each other, and break each other's hearts. Their parents get to watch them grow; to heal, to hold, to protect, to nurture, to abuse and to neglect. The world will be exactly as it was. As it should have been. Clark will be the hero Metropolis deserves, and he… he will finally get to-

Energy crackles through the chamber as it powers up, the high whine of the accelerators and the increasing pressure almost enough to make him black out. When he comes back to himself Superman is shaking off plaster dust and chunks of reinforced concrete, his garish blue and red suit barely dulled, bright sparks highlighting his single outstretched hand, raised, as always, in sharp opposition.

"I can't let you do it, Luthor," he says.

"You have no idea what you're talking about," he snaps back. "As always."

"I don't need to know exactly what's going on to know it's bad, and it's your fault," the alien insists.

"This machine has nothing to do with what's going on," he says coldly. "It only has one purpose, will only affect one thing. We both know where this all began, _Superman_. We both know what has to change to save the world from what we've done."

"We?" Superman demands, predictably outraged. "What did I-" His jaw drops mid-word and he stares in stunned horror. " _Began?_ Is that what you've built? A time machine to take you back?"

He shrugs. The days when he would have tried to explain are long past.

Superman shakes his head angrily. "You don't get to play God like that. If you want a second chance you have to earn it, like everybody else."

"Oh, believe me," he scoffs. "That's the last thing I want."

"What _do_ you want?" Superman insists.

The voice is as stern as ever, but for a moment the alien mask slips, and he sees Clark. Not Clark Kent, reporter, but Clark. A boy he once knew. He feels empty, gutted, the fury and blind rage that have fuelled him for so long evaporating to leave him desolate, a hollow shell of the man he was – _is_ – could have been. He'd felt like this once before, and then he'd met Clark and it had seemed like the whole world rushed in to fill his empty spaces.

" _Lex?_ " It's a trick of perception, no doubt, barometric pressure affecting his auditory as well as visual processing, but he even _sounds_ right. It's been years since anyone's used his name. "What is it you want?"

He looks his best enemy in the eye and smiles.

" _Nam sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo."_

Clark – _it's definitely Clark now_ – just looks at him, irritation warring with bafflement on his face. He sighs. No number of after school tutorials was ever going to compensate for the inadequacies of the Kansas public school system.

He hits enter on the final sequence. Clark's hand shoots out, fingers catching the edge of the capsule door as it slams shut, holding it. Hydraulics creak and whine, and the plexi-glass, twenty millimetres thick, cracks under the pressure. Alarms blare in a building with no one left to hear them.

 _Containment breached. Containment breached. Contai–_

Everything dissolves into light.

*****

Boardrooms, basements, bullets and gravestones, silk pillows and the tears of a mad woman, an island, a wine cellar, a barn loft, whirl dizzily through his mind as he soars through the air, a million miles above the ground where the body of a young man lies like a broken doll. A sudden, crippling pain in his chest threatens to halt his flight, a burn in his lungs and a bright light seeping in at the corners of his mind pulling him inexorably towards the earth.

It begins to come back to him, the dull ache of his ribs, the shiver of chilled flesh, the hack and spasm of abused throat muscles as he coughs and his whole body convulses, brackish water spewing from his mouth. His eyes flutter open and through the haze he sees a boy, wet and bedraggled and beautiful. A weak turn of his head and he sees a bridge, a river, a muddy bank. He coughs again, his whole chest on fire.

"I could have sworn," he gasps, "that I hit you…" _I know I did_ , an angry voice he almost recognises hisses somewhere in the receding black. _I know you_. And even quieter, _Remember!_

The boy smiles, and it's the loveliest thing Lex has ever seen, the light of it enough to chase the lingering darkness away.

"I know it's kind of hard to believe," the boy says, and he looks for all the world like he should be toeing the dirt, a gentle flush of embarrassment stealing across his angelic face, "and I can't explain it myself. But you _did_."

Lex Luthor falls. Forgets. Is reborn.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel vaguely like I ought to apologise; four Eliot riffs in a single fic is well-nigh unforgiveable. But there you are. And he's kind of the patron of remix in particular, and transformative works in general, anyway: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different."
> 
> Lex's parting shot to Clark is from Petronius' _Satyricon_ , and serves as the epigraph to _The Wasteland_ :
> 
> "I have seen with my own eyes the Sibyl hanging in her jar, and when the boys asked her: What do you want; she answered: I want to die."


End file.
